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Sorry, your arguments melt away when you purposely forget to deal with the multitude of trade agreements including the TPP which aims to dictate corporate economic avarice over every nation's government's constitution and countries existing policies. How sustainable is it when local, state and federal levels can no longer enact any protective environmental laws, encourage any small or growing business with domestic contract, where voting for levels of governance is over riding by foreign corporations investor rights to profit at the expense of the countries people, land and economic self determination. In Canada we were lied to and signed NAFTA, now instead of open and fair economic competition we are faced with badly managed foreign companies using NAFTA communism's mandate to guarantee that any and all foreign companies MUST make profits for investor at the exclusion of national sovereignty, protection of national resources, the denial of any sustainable competition. To date we will in total be on the hook for 1.8 billion dollars to pay for outside corporate malfeasance, flagrant pollution, bad management decisions of corporations in other countries branches, no allowance for national innovation, etc, etc. How did so many of the invasive vulture trade agreements seem to skirt your vigilant beam?????? I as a global taxpayer are frankly fed up with the piling lies and just maybe see that if these lies are to ensure the 1% can operate with impunity while continuing to steal every tax dollar from our nation government in the guise of free theft trade of the only markets left to plunder---local, state and federal taxpayers of each and every country need to drained.

Mr. Sachs, let's get the facts straight. The Americans use the world to load off their financial crime waste, the Americans use the world to pay for their corporate oil crimes. Actually BP didn't cause the Deepwater Horizon oil spill but its US contractor Transoceans. Only that Transoceans has no end customer related business. The ruthless exploitation of BP sents a strong signal and explains why the Germans are right to go for the renewables. Just imagine how many solar plants you could built with 25 billion $.

This is a fine article and thank you for covering this travesty, which occurs on a large scale and is largely hidden from the public view.

I would gladly forego charging oil executives and corrupt government leaders with criminal charges -- if doing so would drop opposition within those quarters to the actual cleanup and remediation of contaminated land and waterways, once a spill has occurred.

Many hundreds of cleanup operations are not being executed on account of pending lawsuits and criminal charges.

(When a prosecutor can stand up in court and say "XYZ oil company MUST be guilty of criminal behavior because the proof of that which I have right here in my hand is the 90-million-dollar itemized cleanup bill.")

From my point of view, when a spill occurs (whether caused by negligence, act of nature, terrorism, or anything else) if the oil company comes forward right away, issues a press release, informs the relevant government authorities, and begins work on cleanup and remediation right away -- this should qualify that company and it's executives from any criminal lawsuits regarding that particular spill. Period, end.

Yes, it's that important.

For companies who do not want to initiate the above-noted proper response to a spill, then let the full force of the law be applied. If that means a 20-billion-dollar fine to cover the costs of third-party cleanup efforts AND prison time for oil executives, that is just fine with me. I'd say they are 'getting off light' with that sort of meagre punishment.

But for oil executives who duly report and properly respond to oil spills -- full immunity from criminal prosecution.

That is what it is going to take to ensure proper cleanup of inevitable oil spills to come and the present-day oil spills which are still pouring oil today, into lakes and rivers and valuable lands.

Humans do not act without motivation.
When there is a need to change the prevalent attitude, approach people can either use negative or positive motivation.
Usually when significant change is required applying negative motivation can be successful to wake people up and introduce "fear" keeping them aligned with the new direction.
But in order to achieve long term, sustainable change a positive motivation is required, otherwise as "fear" dissipates and people start finding the ways avoiding punishment, going around it, the desired direction is lost.
And positive motivation can only come from a global education program to all layers, cultures and ages of the society to explain that we all exist in a vast natural ecosystem we ourselves are part of, and only if we keep the fundamental laws of nature, the laws of balance and homoeostasis can we expect not only a sustainable future but survival of our species.